No Doubt Raid Their Vault

We're going on seventeen years, says No Doubt bassist Tony Kanal rather wistfully. To celebrate, the SoCal rock group will release the four-disc retrospective Boom Box on November 25th, featuring its singles, videos and some rarities.

The hits collection, which will also be sold separately as a single disc, focuses on the years since the band's commercial breakthrough in 1995 with "Just a Girl." It includes one new recording, a remake of the Eighties Talk Talk hit "It's My Life." Considering the New Wave and dance-pop elements that have crept into the band's music over the years, it wasn't a surprise cover choice. (Other songs in consideration included INXS's "Don't Change" and Depeche Mode's "A Question of Lust.") "We love Eighties music," says Kanal. "['Life'] just kind of rose to the top of our list."

Box's two DVDs contain a 1997 concert, Live in the Tragic Kingdom, and a collection of the band's videos. The B sides disc includes covers of the Vandals' Christmas song "Oi to the World!" and Bad Brains' "Sailin' On," as well as an Elvis Costello cameo ("I Throw My Toys Around") and a few unreleased songs and alternate versions of album tracks.

To mark the best-of release, Kanal hopes No Doubt will go on tour by the end of the year. That will depend largely on the availability of lead singer Gwen Stefani, who has just finished playing Jean Harlow in Martin Scorsese's upcoming movie The Aviator. She's also started work on her first solo album. Despite the success Stefani has had outside the band, there's no plans to end No Doubt -- in fact, Kanal has even co-written a few songs for the singer's solo debut.

"It's cool to see everybody do their own thing," he says. "We've already accomplished so much together."

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Song Stories

“Tonight's the Night”

The Shirelles | 1960

The lead cut and title track from this girl group's debut album, "Tonight's the Night" was written by 19-year-old bandmember Shirley Owens, who sings lead, and producer Luther Dixon. The band from Passaic, New Jersey met in high school, first calling themselves the Pequellos. The song's frank thoughts about sexual and emotional surrender was racy for the time, but that didn't stop the Chiffons from cutting a similar version immediately after the original came out. "We were the first female group to write some of our own material," band member Beverly Lee recalls. "We did have some say-so in our writing."

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